11/11/10

Compugen, The Future of Drug Discovery

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Here is some really good analysis on the Future of Drug Discovery. Computerized Genetic Analysis for targeted therapeutics using Comugen's technology. It is a very complex system that doesn't have a guarantee for success but it is changing the way pharmaceutical and biotech companies research innovative new drugs. Currently, Zacks has a #1 Strong Buy Ranking on Compugen (CGEN).  Visit their website at www.cgen.com.


Compugen collaborates with many companies and is poised for a breakout with a future blockbuster drug discovery, which would give them royalty payments for their innovation. Find out more about Compugen's collaborative partners here, some notable companies include Pfizer, Roche, Teva, and Merck.

Compugen Licenses Novel Oncology Target to Seattle Genetics


Agreement provides Seattle Genetics with research license and option for exclusive commercial license to monoclonal antibody-based therapeutics targeting Compugen-discovered target

Existence of target initially predicted in silico using Compugen’s Monoclonal Antibody Targets Discovery Platform


TEL AVIV, Israel--(BUSINESS WIRECompugen Ltd. (
NASDAQ: CGEN) announced today that it has signed a research collaboration agreement with Seattle Genetics, Inc., USA, covering a Compugen-discovered oncology target. The agreement provides Seattle Genetics with an initial evaluation period and an option for an exclusive worldwide milestone and royalty bearing license for development and commercialization of monoclonal antibody therapeutics addressing this novel target. The existence of the target, which is a previously unknown splice variant of a known oncology target, was initially predicted in silico through the use of Compugen’s Monoclonal Antibody (mAb) Targets Discovery Platform. The predicted molecule’s existence and overexpression in several of the most prevalent solid cancers was recently demonstrated in independent experimentally based studies.

Dr. Anat Cohen-Dayag, president & CEO of Compugen, stated, “We are very enthusiastic about this new collaboration, our first with Seattle Genetics, a leading company in the rapidly growing field of monoclonal antibodies and antibody drug conjugates. The Compugen novel target that is the subject of this agreement has shown potential in a number of important unmet areas of cancer treatment.”

Dr. Cohen-Dayag continued, “We also are pleased to see the continuing and growing interest of the industry with respect to our mAb Targets Discovery Platform. This unique capability, which addresses the key unmet market need in the rapidly growing antibody therapeutic field, is now serving as both the source of targets for collaborations, such as the one being announced today and our ongoing collaboration with Bayer Schering Pharma, and also to predict and select, in combination with other Compugen tools and capabilities, an inventory of potential targets for further internal development under the new program disclosed earlier this week in our quarterly press release.”

Martin Gerstel, Compugen’s chairman, added, “As described in the quarterly release, our business model provides three potential pathways for development and commercialization of our product candidate discoveries. Collaborations can be entered into before our prediction and selection of candidates is undertaken pursuant to ‘discovery on demand’ agreements, or with respect to existing Compugen product candidates, collaborations can be initiated prior to or at the proof of concept stage, or after additional preclinical activities have been undertaken by us. In all cases these agreements provide Compugen with potential milestone payments and royalties on product sales or other revenue sharing arrangements. The decision as to which pathway we choose in each specific case will depend on many factors, such as proprietary knowledge or technology of a potential partner that could expedite and increase the probability of success of development or commercialization; the anticipated overall relationship with the potential partner; our assessment of the risk/reward profile of further development by us; and available financial terms at each point in time.”

About Compugen’s Monoclonal Antibody (mAb) Targets Discovery Platform

Compugen’s mAb Targets Discovery Platform relies heavily on Compugen’s LEADS and MED capabilities, two
computational biology infrastructure platforms that serve as core components for the development of Compugen’s discovery platforms. The LEADS platform provides a comprehensive view of the human transcriptome, proteome, and peptidome and serves as a rich infrastructure for the discovery of novel genes, transcripts and proteins. It includes extensive gene information and annotation, such as: splice variants, antisense genes, SNPs, novel genes, RNA editing, etc. At the protein level, LEADS provides full protein annotation, including homologies, domain information, subcellular localization, peptide prediction, and novelty status. The MED Platform is an integrated database composed of the results from more than 40,000 public and proprietary microarray experiments, normalized and organized into approximately 1,400 therapeutically relevant conditions (i.e. normal tissues, malignant tissues, tissues from drug treated patients, etc.). Utilizing a sophisticated query interface, the proprietary MED platform allows the simultaneous examination of the expression of genes and pathways across all 1,400 conditions and tissues as well as all 40,000 microarray experiments.

In addition to incorporating MED and LEADS, the mAb Targets Discovery Platform utilizes multiple data sources and algorithms to predict a large number of novel membrane proteins that can serve as targets for antibody therapeutics, such as for various cancers and autoimmune diseases. The selection of appropriate candidates from this large body of predicted membrane proteins is accomplished using sub-modules of algorithms and other computational tools developed specifically for each disease state or protein family.

About Compugen
Compugen is a leading drug and diagnostic product candidate discovery company. Unlike traditional high throughput trial and error experimental based discovery, Compugen’s discovery efforts are based on in silico (by computer) product candidate prediction and selection utilizing a broad and continuously growing infrastructure of proprietary scientific understandings and predictive platforms, algorithms, machine learning systems and other computational biology tools to address important unmet therapeutic and diagnostic needs - either for Compugen or its partners. Compugen’s growing number of collaborations covering the further development and commercialization of Compugen discovered product candidates all provide Compugen with potential milestone payments and royalties on product sales or other forms of revenue sharing. These collaborations may be entered into before product candidate discovery is undertaken pursuant to “discovery on demand” type arrangements, or with respect to existing product candidates, collaborations can be initiated prior to or at the proof of concept stage, or after additional preclinical activities have been undertaken by Compugen. In 2002, Compugen established an affiliate, Evogene Ltd. (www.evogene.com) (TASE:EVGN.TA.ta - News), to utilize certain of the Company’s in silico predictive discovery capabilities in agricultural biotechnology. For additional information, please visit Compugen's corporate website at
http://www.cgen.com/.


Compugen Reports Third Quarter 2010 Financial Results
Company to initiate preclinical development for selected therapeutic product candidates, including CGEN-15001

Compugen Ltd. On Tuesday October 26, 2010

TEL AVIV, Israel--(BUSINESS WIRE)

Compugen Ltd. (
NASDAQ: CGEN) today reported financial results for the third quarter ending September 30, 2010.

Dr. Anat Cohen-Dayag, Compugen’s president and CEO stated, “Our business model is to utilize our systematic and broadly applicable predictive discovery capabilities to provide product candidates to the drug and diagnostic industries under licensing and other commercialization arrangements. An extremely important validation of this model, and of our prediction and selection capabilities, has been the high level of interest shown during the past two years by potential partners in collaborations covering Compugen product candidates at a significantly earlier stage of development than such companies typically would require.”

Dr. Cohen-Dayag continued, “With this scientific and industry validation in hand, substantial efforts during 2010 have been directed to planning and initiating a program to substantially increase the value of our discoveries by advancing selected molecules beyond the animal disease model proof of concept, something we have not previously done. We are currently selecting the first set of molecules for this new program from those that have already achieved this stage; additional candidates will be selected from our validation pipeline and future discovery runs. Included in the molecules selected to date is CGEN-15001, our recently announced product candidate for autoimmune diseases, which has attracted very significant industry interest and continues to show excellent results in on-going studies.”

“It is anticipated that the candidates selected for these preclinical activities will be primarily protein, peptide and monoclonal antibody therapeutics, mainly for use in the fields of oncology and immunology. As part of our preparation during 2010 for this expanded development effort, we selected approximately 20 novel molecules to enter our validation pipeline, in addition to the eight molecules that have already successfully completed animal disease model or similar therapeutic proof of concept validation studies,” said Dr. Cohen-Dayag.

“This new program is an important addition as we broaden and accelerate the implementation of our business model. A further component of this effort is our ongoing, but previously undisclosed, collaboration with Flamel Technologies of Lyon, France to develop therapeutic products to the Investigational New Drug (IND) stage. The products to be developed under this agreement will combine selected Compugen discovered molecules with Flamel’s delivery technology, and will be jointly owned by the two companies. Also, with respect to other commercialization activities, we are currently in discussions with various companies regarding both licensing of certain product candidates and ‘discovery on demand’ collaborations,” Dr. Cohen-Dayag concluded.

Martin Gerstel, Compugen’s chairman, added, “Successfully advancing product candidates 12-18 months past animal proof of concept can increase the value of such molecules by an order of magnitude or more, particularly in our focus areas of oncology and immunology. Therefore, with our proven discovery capabilities and knowledge of industry needs, this is an obvious next step for us to take in order to maximize the value of certain of our current and future product candidate discoveries for both the short-term and long-term financial benefit of our shareholders.”

As previously stated, since current revenues result primarily from fees and milestones, our quarterly results are, and will continue to be, subject to substantial fluctuations due to timing. No revenues were recorded for the third quarter of 2010 or the third quarter of 2009, with revenues for the nine months ending September 30, 2010 of $925,000, compared with $225,000 for the first nine months of 2009.

The net loss for the most recent quarter was $1.6 million (including a non-cash expense of $435,000 related to stock based compensation), or $0.05 per share, compared with a net loss of $1.9 million (including a non-cash expense of $460,000 related to stock based compensation), or $0.06 per share, for the corresponding quarter of 2009. The net loss for the first nine months of 2010 was $5.2 million (including a non-cash expense of $1.8 million related to stock based compensation), or $0.16 per share, compared with a net loss of $1.8 million (including a non-cash expense of $1.1 million related to stock based compensation), or $0.06 per share, for the same period in 2009.

The increase in net loss for the first nine months of 2010 compared with the same period in 2009 is due to the sale by Compugen during the second quarter of 2009 of a portion of its holdings of Evogene Ltd. shares for approximately $3.6 million, which is included in “Other income” for the first nine months of 2009.

Research and development expenses for the third quarter of 2010 were $1.5 million compared with $1.4 million for the third quarter of 2009 and remained the Company’s largest expense. Research and development expenses for the first nine months of 2010 were $4.5 million compared with $4.4 million for the comparable period in 2009. These amounts are before the deduction of governmental and other grants, which totaled for the third quarter ended September 30, 2010, $281,000, compared with $180,000 for the corresponding quarter in 2009, and $805,000 for the first nine months of 2010, compared with $697,000 for the comparable period in 2009.

As of September 30, 2010, Compugen had $21.4 million in cash and cash equivalents and short term deposits not including its holding of 1.15 million Evogene Ltd. shares, which currently have a market value of approximately $6 million. Net cash usage for 2010 is currently projected to be approximately $5 million, which is substantially less than initially projected.

Conference Call and Webcast Information

Compugen will hold a conference call to discuss its third quarter results today, Tuesday, October 26, 2010, at 10:00 a.m. EDT. To access the conference call, please dial 1-866-860-9642 from the US or +972-3-918-0609 internationally. The call will also be available via live webcast through Compugen’s website, located at the following link.

A replay of the conference call will be available approximately two hours after the completion of the live conference call. To access the replay, please dial 1-888-782-4291 from the US or +972-3-925-5901 internationally. The replay will be available until 12 noon EDT on October 29, 2010.

About Compugen
Compugen is a leading drug and diagnostic product candidate discovery company. Unlike traditional high throughput trial and error experimental based discovery, Compugen’s discovery efforts are based on in silico (by computer) prediction and selection utilizing a growing number of field focused proprietary discovery platforms accurately modeling biological processes at the molecular level. Compugen’s growing number of collaborations with major pharmaceutical and diagnostic companies cover both (i) the licensing of product candidates discovered by Compugen during the validation of its discovery platforms and in its internal research, and (ii) “discovery on demand” agreements where existing or new Compugen discovery platforms are utilized to predict and select product candidates as required by a partner. In 2002, Compugen established an affiliate, Evogene Ltd. (
http://www.evogene.com/) (TASE: EVGN.ta), to utilize certain of the Company’s in silico predictive discovery capabilities in agricultural biotechnology. For additional information, please visit Compugen's corporate website at http://www.cgen.com/. For exclusive Financial Charts on Compugen's 3Q 2010 click this link.

Total Assets were 29M
Total Liabilities were 1.2M
They reported a net loss of 1.57M with a 9 month year loss of 5.2M
Net Cash on hand was 21.4M


Compugen: On the Road to Breakthroughs
by: Prohost Biotech May 12, 2010
about:
CGEN

We expect to see breakthrough discoveries and treatments being made by Compugen (CGEN) through its far-reaching discovery and validation engines. We discussed many previous discoveries in past Prohost Letters and Tuesday's news enabled us to witness an important revelation. The membrane protein, CGEN-928, which had no recognized function or potential clinical utility, could now serve as a multiple myeloma drug target thanks to Compugen’s discovery engines.


What is the story?

Earlier evaluation by Compugen of the in silico predicted CGEN-928 transcript demonstrated high expression levels in multiple myeloma samples (including drug resistant and aggressive primary tumor cell lines) compared with various normal tissue samples. Following studies performed with two independent experimental systems confirmed the existence of the CGEN-928 protein on the membranes of cells derived from the bone marrow of multiple myeloma patients, as well as on the membranes of primary tumor cell lines both from cell culture grown in mice. The results support the potential therapeutic value of this protein in the treatment of multiple myeloma, including in patients with an aggressive and drug resistant form of the disease.

A monoclonal antibody targeting this protein could be a valuable therapeutic for multiple myeloma and the protein itself would serve as a diagnostic and prognostic marker for this cancer. The findings also indicate that CGEN-928 may offer the diagnostic potential to detect a broader population of multiple myeloma cells, including critical drug resistant tumor cells. Compugen has filed patent applications covering the use of CGEN-928 for its therapeutic and diagnostic purposes.

Dr. James R. Berenson, a leading multiple myeloma specialist and the Medical & Scientific Director of The Institute for Myeloma & Bone Cancer Research in California, where most of this research was conducted, stated, “These early results obtained with CGEN-928 are very encouraging, especially given the fact that this protein is showing high levels of expression in many multiple myeloma tumors that are very resistant to current therapy, in addition of being highly aggressive.”

Dr. Anat Cohen-Dayag, Compugen’s president and CEO, expressed her enthusiasm for Compugen’s initial portfolio of novel antibody drug targets, such as CGEN-928, which has the potential to meet critical needs for oncology diagnosis and treatment. Dr Cohen-Dayag said that Compugen’s recent target candidate discoveries are clearly demonstrating to the pharmaceutical industry the power and unique capabilities of its Monoclonal Antibody Targets Discovery Platform, and that the firm is now seeing rapidly growing interest in exploring potential collaborations with it in this field.

The importance of this discovery is that it points to the firm’s technological capability, not just a single event. The firm has taken a long time to build this capability. Now the time has come for it to cash in on the results, which are expected to bring breakthrough diagnostics and therapeutics, which the market is impatient to have.
To read the firm’s press release click here.

Compugen Goes the Extra Mile in Drug Discovery
by: Prohost Biotech August 13, 2010
about:
CGEN

With the evolution of the genomic and proteomic technologies, we highly regard and appreciate the firms that have invested in these technology towards breakthrough discoveries that are used in a therapeutic progress towards healing chronic and deadly diseases. One of these firms has offered us more than hints about what it can accomplish through its thoroughly developed technologies. The firm in question is Compugen (CGEN) and is still small as measured by its market cap, but we see it as a future giant based on its achievements. Using its LEADS Platform and other proprietary algorithms and technologies, Compugen was capable of predicting in silico the existence of novel members of the B7/CD28 family of co-stimulatory proteins, and discovering an extracellular region of the predicted (previously unknown) membrane protein in the B7/CD28 family.

B7/CD28 co-stimulation protein family is of extreme importance in immune regulation. Compugen’s predictive capability and experimental validation of a previously unknown member of this important protein family represents a major advancement in therapeutic discovery from being totally based on experimentation to originating from in silico prediction and selection new capabilities. With the discovery of the new extracelluar region membrane protein in the B7/CD28 family, Compugen has walked extra steps towards developing a product, CGEN-15001, as a novel soluble recombinant fusion protein that corresponds to the extracellular region of the discovered parent protein. Compugen is patenting both the parent protein, which potentially has other medical uses such as a target for antibody therapeutics, and its CGEN-15001 molecules.

After validating the predicted functional activity of CGEN-15001 as a new member of the B7/CD28 family proteins, Compugen embarked on Validating the drug in vivo in mouth model of relapsing-remitting experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (R-EAE) mouse model a recognized mouse model for multiple sclerosis. The results demonstrated potent improvement of the disease state and indicated that CGEN-15001 could have therapeutic utility for the treatment of multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, inflammatory bowel disease, and type 1 diabetes.

According to professor Stephen Miller from Northwestern University, a leading scientist in this field who supervised the experiments, CGEN-15001 has scored a robust disease suppressing activity in the SJL R-EAE model. The drug has the unique ability to inhibit proliferation, differentiation, and cytokine production of pro-inflammatory Th1 and Th17 responses while at the same time sparing or actually promoting regulatory Th2-derived cytokines. The professor added “As far as I am aware, this potentially very beneficial pattern of inhibiting Th1/Th17 while promoting Th2 responses is unique among the reagents targeting the B7 family of co-stimulatory molecules that have been published to date.”

Compugen’s capability emanate from its LEADS platform, which provides a comprehensive predictive view of the human transcriptome, proteome and peptidome. It enables the discovery of novel genes, transcripts and proteins. It comprises extensive gene information and annotation, such as splice variants, antisense genes, SNPs, novel genes and RNA editing. At the protein level, the technology provides full protein annotation, including homologies, domain information, subcellular localization, peptide prediction and novelty status. Compugen’s success emanates from its capability understanding and modeling of genomic structure, of gene expression, protein structural domains, and cellular localization.

Autoimmune diseases develop when the immune system attacks its own cells, tissues, and organs. It comprises more than 80 chronic, and often disabling, illnesses. Among the most common autoimmune diseases are rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease, type 1 diabetes, thyroiditis, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis and many other known, or yet to be recognized diseases. Autoimmune diseases affect an estimated 25 million people in the U.S.

Disclosure: Long CompuGen


 

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